Elon Musk: The Internet’s Lifesaver Boosts the Crypto Market

[CoinEx]

On January 31, 2022, Elon Musk started purchasing Twitter stock in almost daily increments. At the time, no one would have imagined that he would acquire Twitter as a whole nine months later. The moment Musk walked into Twitter’s San Francisco office holding a white sink, the crypto world was officially linked to the real world.



Elon Musk has been operating on the verge of the Internet and cryptocurrency. We say this because the business tycoon is not really a member of the Internet industry. From cars to rockets, and from underground tunnels to brain-computer interfaces, the man’s focuses make himself a typical tech giant. Moreover, Elon Musk is not a part of the crypto community either. After all, he never issued any crypto. Despite that, Elon Musk has had a profound impact on both sectors.

Musk has single-handedly turned DOGE from an obscure Meme coin into a trending crypto with a total market cap of nearly $20 billion. Besides, the man wields an enormous influence on the Internet and is always at the center of the spotlight.

For instance, during his acquisition of Twitter, Musk made use of public opinion as he tried to acquire the company with the least amount of money.

Beyond Twitter
The acquisition also shows Musk’s ambitions beyond Twitter. According to documents submitted by Twitter this May, a group of institutional investors, including Binance, Fidelity, Brookfield, and Sequoia Capital, stated that they’d be willing to help Musk acquire Twitter.



Before the acquisition took place, Musk had secured $13 billion in loans from several banks. Later on, Changpeng Zhao said on Twitter that Binance had remitted about $500 million to Musk. Meanwhile, Musk’s lawyers had already sent equity commitment documents to the relevant partners (see the picture above).

On the list of equity investors featuring celebrated institutional investors, the name Binance stands out, which indicates that crypto companies are gradually getting accepted by traditional institutions. That said, to achieve his ambitions, Must needs more than just Binance.

In early October, Musk tweeted that “Buying Twitter is an accelerant to creating X, the everything app”. Here, X immediately reminds us of the fact that the three holding companies behind the Twitter acquisition are all registered in the name of “X Holdings”.



Musk’s obsession with X (his company focusing on making rockets is called SpaceX) is rooted in his investment in an online banking website called x.com in the early days of his career. Subsequently, the site merged with Confinity and evolved into Paypal, a well-known payment service provider. After he was later kicked out of Paypal, Musk bought back the domain name. Apart from all these, Musk has publicly complimented WeChat’s business model, calling it a “super app” that can be used for everything.

Once you put together “cryptocurrency”, “payment”, and “WeChat”, in whatever order, you just know that Elon Musk would bring disruptive changes to these industries.

“The bird is freed”
Looking back at 2021, it’s not hard to see how Musk disdains Wall Street’s unfree and fake business model.

In early 2021, the GameStop short squeeze, an epic investment war, took place. During the incident, American retail investors went berserk. Instead of being chump investors devoured by Wall Street tycoons, they became fighters who made the short sellers and institutional investors suffer losses of nearly $5.05 billion. During the short squeeze, Elon Musk tweeted a link to the WallStreetBets subreddit when retail investors were planning the short squeeze, with the caption, “Gamestonk!!”. Subsequently, the share price of GameStop skyrocketed.



We all know that Musk has been giving Dogecoin free publicity. But in 2021, he posted a picture of Web3 People promoting DAO to him and then posted another picture of sending People to the moon, which pushed up the People price significantly. This might be just an unintentional move, or it could also be another silent support for democracy.

Despite all that, we believe Musk wanted to create a freer and more open social platform before acquiring Twitter. As he tweeted on the day of the acquisition, the bird is freed.

Twitter + Blockchain = Web3
As the Twitter acquisition approached its conclusion, more details of the case were revealed. On Twitter, @CroissantEth has recently posted part of the conversations between Elon Musk and people that include FTX founder SBF and former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey.

According to the screenshot, Musk plans to build a blockchain SNS platform with payment functions. In addition, he’s also got a Plan B, a blockchain-based version of Twitter where users would have to pay maybe 0.1 DOGE per comment or repost of that comment.



Another tech KOL also tweeted that Twitter will copy WeChat’s business model, allow users to tip content creators with crypto, and support the use of NFTs.

Most investors think that Musk will use Dogecoin for giving tips on Twitter. Meanwhile, instead of avoiding his connection with Dogecoin, the business tycoon posted a dog wearing short sleeves with the Twitter Logo. Following the tweet, the DOGE price surged.



Conclusion
Putting the pieces together, we may clearly see Musk’s true vision. The man is trying to break the development bottleneck of Web2 and create more practical Web3 scenarios, and Twitter is the foundation for achieving these goals. Today, as both the Internet and cryptocurrency lack new narratives to spark market enthusiasm, Elon Musk has come along with his Twitter and Dogecoin.

That being said, to completely turn Twitter into a blockchain app, the massive user data and crypto wallets needed for tipping are all urgent concerns, which explains why Binance is on the list of equity investors concerning the Twitter acquisition.

We can already picture that Twitter, after it becomes owned by Musk, would gradually shift toward Web3. In that process, it would definitely adopt blockchain products such as DID, NFT, Soulbound Tokens (SBTs), and tokens. If it also made data ownership decentralized through decentralized storage, then Twitter would evolve into a massive Web3 universe with few competitors in the market.

Like Elon Musk, CoinEx is also trying to bridge the gap between Web2 and Web3. Looking back, a large swath of crypto exchanges has been outdated. Despite the cutthroat competition, CoinEx has remained committed to its founding vision of “Via Blockchain, Making the World a Better Place” while moving forward steadily.

To achieve that simple vision, the team has made dedicated efforts to make crypto more accessible to more users from around the world, helping them benefit from crypto, which is long overdue. After five years of growth, CoinEx has become a free, safe, and convenient crypto exchange where everyone is equal. Although the crypto market remains volatile, CoinEx has stayed committed to its original goals, and it is this sincerity and commitment that helped the exchange survive crypto bears and embark on its next five-year adventure.

Disclaimer: No investment advice is provided in this article, and all data mentioned herein are for reference only. You should not rely on the information provided herein to make any investment decision, and you will be fully liable for your own investment decisions.